Hagan Scotten Bio
Hagan Scotten is a U.S. Army veteran who won two Bronze Stars with the Special Forces in Iraq. He served as an assistant United States Attorney for the Southern Districk of New York until his resignation in February 2025.
His resignation was prompted by a suspension by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove after he alleged that he refused to file a motion to dismiss the case against New York mayor Eric Adams. Hagan said thatDanielle Sassoon, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, never asked him to file prior to her resignation but he agreed with her and added that he couldn’t have filed it either.
Hagan Scotten Education
Scotten holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, he was awarded Fay Diploma given to valedictorians. He had also received the Sears Prize, given to the three students with the highest grades in the 2L year. He worked on the Harvard Law Review and was named best oralist in the Ames Moot Court Competition in the fall of 2009.
Hagan served in the Military
Scotten served in the U.S. Army for ten years and served three tours in Iraq as a Special Forces officer. During his service, he worked with the Iraqi National Counterterrorism Force to investigate and pursue insurgent leader. He won two Bronze Stars as a troop commander in the Fifth Special Forces Group.
Hagan Scotten Prosecutor
Hagan was a prosecutor for Southern Distric New York serving as an assistant United States Attorney. He began his career as a law clerk for Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court. Thereafter, he gained private law firm experience after joing Hogan Lovells as an associate.
Hagan was the lead prosecutor on the Luchese Family of La Cosa Nostra case. The acting Boss ‘Madonna’ alongside three other members were found guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and other felonies.
In addition, he prosecuted Whitehead, who was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and attempting to use his connections to the mayor to extort a Bronx auto mechanic.
He also prosecuted former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, Charles McGonigal who pleaded guilty to conspiring to circumvent US sanctions while colluding with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He was sentenced to 50-month in prison.
Scotten was a lead prosecutor on Eric Adams Indictment
Scotten was a lead prosecutor on New York Mayor Eric Adams indictment prior to his resignation. Eric is facing federal bribery and fraud charges. According to Scotten the investigation against Adams began in the summer of 2021 prior to him becoming mayor. The investigation unearthed text messages, emails and records from Turkish Airlines which show the mayor tried to “create the illusion” he properly paid for certain flights when, in fact, he had not. He also sought to tamper with witnesses.
According to the indictment, Eric accepted more than $100,000 in improper benefits over nearly a decade, many of which came in the form of flight upgrades and stays in luxury hotels, none of which were publicly divulged as required.
It also alleges that Eric and a staffer knowingly worked with Turkish nationals to send foreign money to straw donors for his mayoral campaign, and used that money to rake in over $10 million from New York City’s matching funds program.
Hagan Scotten Resignation
Hagan is one among the seven prosecutors who have resigned following acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove demand to dismiss the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Hagan was first suspended, alongside the other prosecutors in the case against Adam with Emil launching a probe that would determine whether they kept their job. This was prompted by Danielle Sassoon resignation after she was asked to drop the charges but she instead resigned.
In his resignation letter, Hagan indicated that he didn’t refuse to dismiss the indictment against Adam as Danielle never asked him to file the motion but he add that he entirely agreed with her decision not to dismiss.
“In short, the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued underfourdifferent U.S. attorneys is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy
objectives.”
He also added that the law and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial powerto influence other citizens and that he was never going to file the motion.
“I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial powerto influence other citizens,
much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot ofthe President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough ofa coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
Sassoon and Scotten are both registed Republicans and joined the U.S. attorney’s office after serving as law clerks for prominent conservative Supreme Court judges the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts respectively.